Women 2.0http://blogs.forbes.com/women2
Women innovators in technology share their stories.Wed, 10 Sep 2014 21:09:00 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.25 Ways to Improve Student Access to STEM Career Opportunitieshttp://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/08/05/5-ways-to-improve-student-access-to-stem-career-opportunities/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/08/05/5-ways-to-improve-student-access-to-stem-career-opportunities/#commentsTue, 05 Aug 2014 20:57:00 +0000http://blogs.forbes.com/women2/?p=2458The only way to encourage more young people to graduate and get involved in STEM careers is by letting them know the opportunities out there. So what are you waiting for?

By Kara Kennedy

Do you remember the moment you decided what you were going to be when you grew up? I considered being a nurse (like my mom) or a salesman (like my dad) or an educator until finally settling on social work, based on a teacher’s suggestion.

In retrospect, I regret only exploring four career options, but I understand why it happened – I simply didn’t have exposure to many workplace settings or career alternatives.

Not Much Has Changed

Not surprisingly, the outlook for many of our nation’s young people is getting bleaker by the day. Consider the following statistics:

If you are born into poverty today, you have a 42% chance of remaining in poverty for the rest of your life.

Of the 30,000 freshmen who enter Chicago Public Schools each year, only about 2,400 will graduate from college.

78% of high school dropouts will be jobless by the time they are 24 years old.

Unfortunately, many students aren’t exposed to much more than I was 30 years ago, at least when it comes potential career paths.

If we want to increase the number of students graduating from college, it starts by engaging, exposing, inspiring and preparing them for their career possibilities.

Young women participate in a conference at the Argonne National Laboratory. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Turning the Tide in STEM Careers

When my nonprofit organization stumbled into providing STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) experiential learning opportunities for students, discussions were focused on how we can encourage more technology professionals into teaching.

While educators are important, I don’t think our approach should be limited to beefing up the ranks of faculty.

There are a number of ways businesses can get involved, and if you are a STEM professional, you have something to bring to the table. Try one of these five tips to get started:

1. Host a Career Site Visit

Work with a local teacher to host a group of students at your facility. Here in Chicago, we work with CDW, which recently led a group of 18 students through their warehouse and data center, framing the event around the concept of careers in technology.

The students were also exposed to the sales department, where they saw individuals working directly with customers and explored another side of the tech industry.

2. Speak to a Classroom of Students

Take your passion beyond the four walls of your office and into a local classroom. Schools frequently host career day fairs, and it’s a great chance to share your own experiences.

Tech experts Chandrika Shrinivasan and Anusha Challa of TATA Consultancy Services (TCS) both funded their own educations through tutoring services or scholarships. We partnered with the women to help them spend a morning with students at the Chicago Math and Science Academy sharing how they too can pursue careers in technology.

3. Solve Real-World Problems

My company works with Accenture, which recently hosted 15 juniors and seniors to design an app targeting a problem in their school.

The students were put into teams of three and paired with digital marketing specialists, designers and project managers. Showing students how ideas work to solve real-world problems gets them excited to lend their talents to the industry and be part of something big.

4. Offer Summer Internships

Hire students to work alongside your team while they’re out of school for the summer. A meaningful internship gives students the opportunity to see what a career in STEM really looks like and teaches them the work ethic and communication skills required to succeed in the workplace. Your team will also benefit from the experience and the extra hands on deck.

5. Offer Incentives for Mentorship

Give your team the extra motivation to mentor a student interested in STEM. Allow flex time on Friday afternoons for skills-based volunteering or offer rewards for getting involved. Often, support from executives is the push employees need to get more involved in the local community.

Our communities need volunteers to engage and inspire students. By increasing students’ exposure to STEM careers, I believe that together, we can spark an interest, ignite a future and change young people’s lives by helping them envision a brighter future.

Kara Kennedy is the executive director of Lumity, a Chicago-based nonprofit that provides financial and technology consulting for other nonprofit organizations.

]]>http://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/08/05/5-ways-to-improve-student-access-to-stem-career-opportunities/feed/3What Tech, the Military and Manufacturing All Have in Commonhttp://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/06/30/what-tech-the-military-and-manufacturing-all-have-in-common/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/06/30/what-tech-the-military-and-manufacturing-all-have-in-common/#commentsMon, 30 Jun 2014 17:09:00 +0000http://blogs.forbes.com/women2/?p=2432Female underrepresentation is not exclusive to tech. At some age, girls hear that they shouldn’t fix cars, program iPhone apps or jump out of military aircraft.

By Holly Mosack

With Sheryl Sandberg recently appearing as a guest on The Colbert Report, it’s safe to say the discussion about gender equality in some workplaces has moved into mainstream conversation. But I believe it’s time we bring two more sectors into the discussion: the military and manufacturing.

Female underrepresentation is also pervasive in the military and manufacturing, but these industries are closely connected. Women with military experience have tremendous opportunities in manufacturing, particularly if they received technical training. Indeed, the manufacturing-military recruitment model may hold powerful insights for tech and other industries that aim to increase female representation in the workforce.

It Starts with the Pipeline Problem

Industries with a lack of women suffer from what I would call a “pipeline problem.”

Underrepresentation is just a symptom of factors that deter women from following careers in tech, the military and manufacturing early in life. We could argue about the role of gender biases, discrimination and cultural stereotypes, but I’d rather answer another question: How do we build pipelines for women?

Focusing on training, not making history (Photo credit: The U.S. Army)

The Post-Military Gap

After graduating from Northwestern University in 1997, I was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army. For seven years, I served on active duty with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the 101st Airborne Division and the 82nd Airborne Division. I advanced to the rank of captain and served a tour in Iraq.

When people leave the military, they often flounder. They don’t think their skills translate anywhere. Veterans go to job fairs, often disappointed to only find law enforcement organizations or military contractors who will send them right back to a base in Afghanistan. Veterans who are ready for civilian life quickly get frustrated.

When I separated from active duty in 2004, chance led me to connect with Advanced Technology Services and land a role as a military recruiter at their headquarters in Peoria, Illinois. The VP of Human Resources was looking for ways to create a targeted recruitment program for veterans. I happened to be an “expert” on what it’s like to get out of the military in the 21st century. I had no recruitment or corporate experience to speak of, yet right off the bat, I was charged with designing a military recruitment program for an organization planning to higher over 800 new employees per year.

Ten years later, 25 percent of our workforce and 30 percent of company leadership is composed of military veterans. Still, too few of these recruits were women.

It’s All About Supply and Demand

Just like in technology, people with electrical, fluid power and mechanical troubleshooting skills are hard to find — and women with such skills are even harder to find.

High schools and junior colleges don’t exactly teach students how to calibrate a pneumatic transducer. In the military, this skillset is taught, along with the theory behind it; you can’t maintain multimillion dollar aircraft, weapons systems, tanks and other sophisticated equipment without a solid understanding of these fundamentals. No Ohio class ballistic missile submarines outside the U.S. Navy? No problem. The same skills that would apply to performing maintenance on a military submarine apply on the plant floor.

Over the last 20 years, Americans have become obsessed with cheap fashion: coveting brand name and low prices over quality and craftsmanship. Consequently, the clothing industry has become yet another victim of our disposable society in which this season’s trendy must-haves become next season’s cast-offs.

Instead of buying classic, well-made wardrobe staples, too many of us have fallen victim to the latest trend forecast that prompts us to run out and buy the latest “it” style.

Furthermore, when each fad passes, many of us think we’re doing a good deed and helping our neighbors in need by donating unwanted clothing to local charities. But the truth is that a surprising amount of this clothing actually ends up as landfill waste or is sold overseas – hardly the image of philanthropy we have in mind when donating.

As the cofounder of a fashion e-commerce startup, I believe in fewer, better things; this issue of mindless consumption resonates deeply with me. My hope is to bring to light the current all-too-pervasive disposable fashion mindset and give you pointers on how to become more conscious, more intentional about shopping — and living.

The Move Towards Fewer, Better Things

Even as some of the major labels and manufacturers continue to move production to China, Bangladesh and other countries in search of cheap labor and low-cost materials, a new consumer movement is afoot.

The recent trend against trendy has thrown the fashion industry for a loop.

Fashion-conscious consumers have become socially, environmentally and quality conscious. Shoppers have a renewed desire for products that are created from the best-quality raw materials, designed with a timeless aesthetic, and made to last by skilled craftsmen who have perfected their trade over decades of experience.

More and more consumers want meaningful products — pieces with stories behind their creation, pieces that will last a lifetime, pieces that serve, in a way, as conversation pieces. This new conscious consumerism and “slow fashion” trend has become an anti-trend of sorts, fueling a growing desire for fewer, better things and an increased transparency in the supply chain. It’s taken effect much in the same way that the farm to table movement changed the way we think about where our food comes from.

Let us be clear that “fewer, better things” is not a message of minimalism.If you love expensive designer jeans, then go ahead and buy 20 pairs — if you love them and will wear them, you have nothing to feel guilty about. The philosophy being: find your style, invest in what you really love and fill your closet with fewer, better things that are meaningful — instead of just filling your closet, period.

The Challenge of “Farm to Table” Fashion

Unlike farm to table — where buying produce and other food products from local sources is feasible because farms exist within a reasonable transportation radius — clothing is another matter.

There simply are not that many cotton farmers, fabric weavers, textile artisans and clothing designers closeby, not to mention the lack of specialty materials and garment producers. While a local farmer can conceivably grow the finest quality tomatoes and broccoli, the best alpaca in quantity can only be found in Peru, and Scotland is the global epicenter of the cashmere heritage.

The problem of meaningful fashion is scale. Sourcing the materials, producing high-quality clothing and accessories and delivering them to market through traditional means is incredibly cost-prohibitive for the consumer. Transportation, wholesale distribution deals and retail markup can send the price of sought-after items soaring far beyond the reach of all but the most affluent consumers. Fortunately, technology is changing that.

]]>http://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/06/03/a-solution-to-scaling-farm-to-table-fashion/feed/2Advisors 101 for Startup Foundershttp://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/05/11/advisors-101-for-startup-founders/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/05/11/advisors-101-for-startup-founders/#commentsMon, 12 May 2014 00:34:00 +0000http://blogs.forbes.com/women2/?p=2363Should you have advisors? Who should they be? How much equity should you give them? Aigerim Shorman answers all your advisor questions.

I stopped counting the number of times I’ve been asked questions like these by founders: Should I bring so and so as an advisor? How much equity should I give him/her? What should I expect in return?

Our company, Wist, has a number of advisors who we brought on board at various stages in the company’s history. As a first time entrepreneur, I can’t emphasize enough how critically important it has been having experienced advisors by our side to help guide us through product launches, fundraising, crisis management and so much more. So, from my point of view, yes, you absolutely do want to have advisors!

However, you have to have a clear understanding of why a specific person would be valuable to you and your company and also understand his or her motivation. Most advisors are very successful individuals who genuinely want to help you. Becoming an advisor is a way of giving back. So bear that in mind when you discuss equity compensation and commitment with them (more on that later).

Too often entrepreneurs fall into the trap of chasing “big names” for advisors and mentors. That’s not the right strategy. First of all because those are also some of the busiest people in the world and, even if they wanted to, they probably wouldn’t be able to dedicate enough time to you.

Instead, try to find people who have domain expertise in whatever it is that you are trying to do. For example, if you are doing e-commerce startup, find someone who experience scaling e-commerce companies. A person like that will be much more valuable to you than some big name that has never done anything in e-commerce.

If you are a first time entrepreneur who doesn’t have any background or relationships in the startup world, recruiting one or two advisors who are respected in the community gets you a certain level of credibility. Most importantly, these advisors will become a voice of wisdom that you can rely on as you try to navigate unchartered territory.

As your company grows, your needs will change and so you will the types of advisors you should recruit. The key here is to know what you don’t know and find advisors who are strong in your areas of weakness. For instance, if you are entering enterprise sales market and nobody on your team has prior experience in enterprise, you would do well getting someone who has a few decades of experience and connections to help you get off the ground.

The best advisors are those with whom you can build a true trusting relationship. You have to be able to be 100% transparent in order to make this a worthwhile investment of time for both of you. True advisors WANT to help. But the caveat is that they only want to help those of us who actually WANT to be helped. There is nothing more frustrating for someone who is busy than to spend hours with a young entrepreneur only to see her disregard the advice given. Though that doesn’t mean you have to take every single word and implement it literally as you’ve been told.

Manage Expectations on All Sides

Managing expectations is by far one of the most important points in building a successful advisory relationship. Start with a base expectation of how often you’d like to meet. In general, you can’t expect more than a few hours a month. As your relationship grows, you will learn how to best communicate, the frequency, the best channels, etc. For example, I talk with some of my advisors on Skype, others via text and others on Facebook chat. You will also go through waves when you will need one advisor more often than another (think fundraising time vs product development). No matter what, don’t forget to keep all of your advisors up to date. You don’t get to just call someone an advisor and never talk to them again or only catch up once every six months. You have to keep them informed and excited about being your advisor so that they can be helpful when you need them.

How Much Equity Should I Give Up?

Equity compensation depends on the stage of your company and amount of time you expect the advisor to spend with you. If you are pre-funding, most likely you would be looking at single digits. The further along the growth path you are, the less equity you’d have to give up. But remember, most advisors are not helping you for money. Equity compensation, especially early on, doesn’t really mean a lot. Still, you don’t want to come across as not valuing their time. So show your appreciation from the get go and start with a strong foundation (read between the lines: Don’t be cheap).

In a nutshell, respect their time, be crisp, focused, and gracious. Always, always, always follow up to let them know the results of any discussion. They are advising you for the intangible gratification of knowing that they were helpful and made a difference. That is the most precious reward in life!

Great entrepreneurs build companies with the future in mind. So it goes without saying that women entrepreneurs can’t afford to be naïve or blind to the business transformation that is happening today. It is critical to understand that we are entering a new phase of business – “the Exponential Age.”

What does that mean? To understand this, first you must understand that never before has there been so much reach with 6.9 billion mobile connections. From 2008-2015 mobile high-speed connections grew 10X allowing over 2 billion mobile devices to access the internet. Blink and that number will be 5 billion. This means 3 billion new minds are coming online ready to learn, engage, contribute – these people along with all of us traditional online participants will be part of the new global innovation community. Together we will create a new era where changes happen faster than ever.

All of us have grown up in a linear world – thinking 10% growth is aggressive growth. But what happens when 10% becomes 10X? With recent examples of the exponential growth rates of Facebook, Groupon, Uber, Airbnb and WhatsApp, it is clear we are witnessing rapid change and growth. So our linear minds need to evolve to think exponential and act with leverage beyond our own organization’s capabilities.

This Changes Everything

This changes everything. It creates lots of mega opportunities, but also makes it critical to raise expectations about how fast we move and how quickly we scale. And with cloud computing, mobile everywhere, social marketing and crowdsourcing, this momentum has never been so achievable since traditional barriers to building and scaling new businesses are melting away.

Leverage is key – if AirBnb needed to build hotels, they would have never scaled to be so relevant. Instead they figured out how to leverage supply that was already there by connecting travelers with homeowners that wanted to share their spaces for extra money. Since its launch in 2008, Airbnb has grown its market share tremendously. It now exceeds 10 million bookings and is used by more than 50,000 renters per night, with about 1,000 new hosts joining its network daily.

If Uber took a traditional approach to limo’s and taxis then they would have to buy cars and deploy them. Instead they designed a lean infrastructure that allowed them to enter more than 60 markets, ranging from the company’s hometown of San Francisco to Berlin and Tokyo. In about three and a half years they have grown to $200 million a year in revenue not counting what they remit to the drivers. Leverage for entrepreneurs is about figuring out your unique value and marrying that with other resources or companies to build your business.

Leverage for established companies is about supplementing their own capabilities and partnering with innovators in a variety of ways.These established companies can collaborate by providing distribution and marketplaces (like Apple App Store and Google Play), strategic relationships to provide joint offerings (like Visa and Monetize, Square and JPMC), or acquisitions like Facebook and WhatsApp. These may look like “one offs”, but I think they are instead the template for how business is done in the Exponential Age.

How to Win in the Exponential Age

We have seen whole industries transform quickly. Television, video, and music all have undergone dramatic and rapid change. Various industries are teed up to follow – but who will be the winners, who will be the losers? And more important, where are the big WhatsApp-like opportunities? And how can women entrepreneurs participate in this transformation?

In the Exponential Age smart, established companies will find ways to work with innovators vs. looking only internally for new products and services. Smart investors will make bets on women entrepreneurs. And of course, passionate women entrepreneurs will dream big, work smart, and move fast.

What else do companies and founders need to do to prepare for the exponential age?

]]>http://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/03/18/women-entrepreneurs-get-ready-for-the-exponential-age/feed/0Why Being A Writer Made Me A Better Founderhttp://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/02/27/why-being-a-writer-made-me-a-better-founder/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/02/27/why-being-a-writer-made-me-a-better-founder/#commentsThu, 27 Feb 2014 14:39:00 +0000http://blogs.forbes.com/women2/?p=2326One founder explains how studying fiction helped prepare her for life at her startup.

When my business partner Niree Perian and I launched our publishing startup, Connu, we operated like writers. We’d met while earning our master’s in fiction, and for months worked out of cafes. We edited each other almost to death. After fourteen-hour days, we found late-night energy in Hollywood piano bars. We slept on couches. And we went broke to create something we cared about enough to interrupt our get-up-like-everything-will-stay-the-same lives.

We learned Silicon Valley things—agile development, Lean Startup, design thinking, growth imperatives—and figured out what works for Connu and what doesn’t. But as I look back on 2013 to prepare for 2014, I’m grateful we started up as writers. Because a writing life can help it all make sense.

Writers and Coders Are the Same Breed

For one thing, it turns out, writers and coders are the same breed. They’re myopic and obsessive, and they start with grand visions that have to shrink way down in order to work. If you’re a writer, you need to be able to feel some pressingly personal thing that’s also big and sweeping; and then you’ve got to talk about it in such a simple and intimate way that everyone will think you’re a mind reader. If you lose your way, your words are worse than pointless; they’re noise. Coders work from the same binary. The other night, one guy told me that if he sits down to code before he’s grappled with the larger problem in his head and figured out his strategy to resolve it, he might as well not work at all. Even if he can get into his zone, he’ll create broken, useless code.

Never Waste People’s Time

Writing fundamentals also helped us with our product ideas. I’ll paraphrase John Trimble’s Writing with Style: What you build (or write) should be worth people’s attention. Never waste people’s time. Offer variety and delight. And remember that nine-tenths of product design is design tweaking, just as nine-tenths of writing is re-writing. Most of all, a well-designed product keeps things simple. “One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple” (Jack Kerouac). One day we will build the right Connu, and it, too, will be simple.

The Bonfire of the Humanities

But the most important thing—the reason Niree and I are in this thing to begin with—is the same sense of urgency that drives us to write. Creative arts belong at the heart of innovation and business. We are still passing through what I’ll call the Bonfire of the Humanities, which are being sacrificed on servers to the gods of technology. (Every other week the New York Times runs another obit.) But a correction is coming. The humanities are the why and the what-for of humans, and we need them. Niree and I decided to start up in the publishing space because culture is alive and interesting and creative when people actually like tuning into it; when they love the art that’s being made, the books that are getting written.

Connu was born when we started asking people how they felt about fiction and how they wanted to feel about it. Since we’ve launched, what inspires us are the countless emails and Tweets and Facebook messages from users who respond to the stories we publish. They help us think both big and small. Writers see double—they see things as they are and as they might be—and so do the most interesting inventors. It’s not just science fiction: good writing and good technology challenge the way we live now and shape how we’ll live tomorrow.

Is there anyone else out there whose humanities background helped them become a tech innovator?

]]>http://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/02/27/why-being-a-writer-made-me-a-better-founder/feed/1What Is Culture?http://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/02/26/what-is-culture/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/02/26/what-is-culture/#commentsWed, 26 Feb 2014 17:25:00 +0000http://blogs.forbes.com/women2/?p=2339The co-founder of Meebo (acquired by Google) on the three questions you need to answer to understand your startup’s culture.

By Elaine Wherry (Co-founder & CXO, Meebo)

A few months ago, I was talking with a leader of a team that had tripled that year. Everyone was thrilled with the company’s success and the growth was expected to continue. You could see how much they valued their employees by their designed space, ergonomic desks, stocked cafeteria, and curated libraries. However, I could also hear the anxiety of having been through an enormous growth spurt and feeling like their culture was changing.

When we think of company culture, we focus on what we can see and touch – the foosball tables, happy hours, and free lunches. But these are only artifacts, what our culture produces.* It’s much harder to pinpoint the root culture. But once we do, we can overcome that nagging worry, “What if we lose what’s made us unique and special?”

To understand culture, we have to look beyond the espresso machines and dog policies. To understand culture, you have to answer these three questions:

How Is Truth Defined?

The answer is surprising – it’s not numbers and metrics! For the police, truth comes from the law. For religion, truth comes from religious text or philosophies. And for a Japanese Geisha, truth comes from tradition.

But within for-profit and startup teams, truth comes from the market, which includes investors, paying users, and Wall Street. But the market is fickle and unfair. Leaders choose what to expose and shelter from their teams. Should a startup provide generous pay and perks in an unproven market? Should every deserving employee be promoted when it’s not necessary to the business? Should employees be notified about every market change at the risk of needless distraction? Companies manage these tradeoffs differently depending upon their missions and current markets.

Is Individual Trust Given or Earned?

Giving trust means believing individuals will make the best decisions if they’re given sufficient data and support. Teams that give trust will hire slower so they can vet whether the candidate has the skills necessary for significant responsibility and accountability on day one. This culture is likely to be more innovative yet chaotic.

Conversely, when individuals earn trust, leaders must outline specific tasks or quotas so individuals can prove themselves. It’s the leaders responsibility to translate strategy into concrete goals and leaders will be accountable if the team fails. The individuals who prove themselves continue with the team and those who don’t, may be let go. This culture is more predictable and easier to scale but at the risk of becoming bureaucratic.

Where Do Ideas Come From?

Leaders have to decide what deserves attention so they can make long-term bets about the future: data, the market, or vision. Data helps model trends and make predictions. However, data is also a trailing indicator and not a guarantee of the future. The market tells us about immediate needs and problems but it only thinks in incremental solutions. Vision allows us to make long-term bets about the future but deciding who has the best vision (e.g. individuals vs. leaders, a visionary vs. a competition winner) can be contentious.

All sources have their strengths. A number-centric company might be better as a fast-follower of trends. A user-centric company might be better at customer support. And a vision-centric company might be innovative provided it has the resources and clarity to move forward.

All of the above influence our culture: how we set goals, our execution speed, how we hire, how the team makes important decisions, how we organize, how critical information is shared, and who is held accountable for success and failure. What we see and touch is likely an answer to one of these questions. For instance, free food can mean, 1) We provide healthy, organic lunches because we believe your well-being is critical to the company’s success, 2) We provide convenient food so you can be more productive, or 3) We provide communal food so everyone gets together as a team and collaborates.

]]>http://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/02/26/what-is-culture/feed/0So You Want To Be A VChttp://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/02/11/so-you-want-to-be-a-vc/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/02/11/so-you-want-to-be-a-vc/#commentsTue, 11 Feb 2014 19:43:00 +0000http://blogs.forbes.com/women2/?p=2317Women 2.0 conference panel moderator and VC Charles Hudson on how to get into a career with no traditional on ramp.

By Lydia Dishman (Contributing Writer, Women 2.0)

Charles Hudson’s path to becoming a venture capital investor happened by accident. “I didn’t know anything about it,” Hudson confesses with a laugh. “I thought I’d be a portfolio manager,” he explains with a nod to his Stanford MBA. But when his then-manager at excite@home suggested he meet with her husband who was in the process of starting a venture capital firm, Hudson agreed to keep an open mind.

He came out with one thought: “This sounds cool. I’ll do this for a little while.” That turned into a nearly four-year stint at In-Q-Tel, the strategic venture capital group for the Central Intelligence Agency.

That was a decade ago. Not quite ready to commit to being a VC at that early stage of his career, Hudson proceeded to land in a series of different positions. Among them: product manager at IronPort Systems, business development at Google and Serious Business (the latter acquired by Zynga), and co-founder and CEO of Bionic Panda Games. After sitting at all sides of the table in the startup world, Hudson decided to heed the original call and become a partner at SoftTechVC, a Silicon Valley-based early stage investment firm.

Hudson’s circuitous path to investing should come as good news to anyone who’s ever dreamed of becoming a VC. According to Hudson, there is no traditional “on ramp” in this career. Though he knows of people who studied economics or statistics as undergraduates and went on to be hired by firms that actively recruit young talent, Hudson maintains the best path may be a creative one like his own.

Start as a Startup

If you’re going to be an investor, Hudson says the experience of starting your own company can provide valuable perspective. After you’ve done the research and brought a product or service successfully to market, you have a good sense of what works and what doesn’t. Even a failed venture offers lessons in what to do better next time. And former founders find it easier to build rapport with other entrepreneurs.

Hudson says it can be helpful to begin documenting your track record, even in the form of blog posts that include your take on your particular industry segment and predictions for what could develop. “Sound judgement is a big part of what [VC firms] look for,” he notes. Writing allows you to amass a chronicle of your thought processes that can show a future employer why you’d make intelligent investments.

The challenge for former founders, says Hudson, is making the transition from being involved in the day-to-day business and moving towards an advisory role. “As a founder you have a lot of direct control over hiring and firing and market strategy,” he explains. Former founders can often forget they aren’t running the company. “You are much more a coach so you have to be really comfortable letting go of the operational role,” he says.

Earn Your Wings

One job title you won’t see on Hudson’s LinkedIn profile is angel investor. But he’s no stranger to that playing field. Moving in the tight tech circles of Silicon Valley opened up the door to groups who were looking to add investors to fund new ventures.

Rather than plunk down $50,000 or more as a solitary investor, Hudson recommends budding VCs to test their wings within an angel group. In this way, you get to hear a lot of pitches that will refine your investing “notebook,” that is, your list of winning ideas. If you don’t immediately connect with a group, it’s worth your while to take a look at the latest investments on AngelList to see what did well.

“It’s also a good way to see whether you have the stomach for it,” he says, “because it is very hard to make real money in angel investing.” If you happen to have that $50k, Hudson advises spreading the wealth to five or ten companies. This way if one tanks because a competitor did better, all is not lost. “One downside of being a VC is that once you are committed you can’t get your money back.”

Fall in Love

Another prerequisite for becoming a VC is the ability to roll with the punches. “I tell everyone that part of being a VC is kind of like falling in love,” Hudson says. He’s quick to point out that he’s never seen a single startup that’s perfect, but the ability to get over the flaws and still want to invest is critical.

]]>http://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/02/11/so-you-want-to-be-a-vc/feed/0Gwynne Shotwell: How SpaceX Keeps Its Startup Culturehttp://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/02/07/gwynne-shotwell-how-spacex-keeps-its-startup-culture/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/02/07/gwynne-shotwell-how-spacex-keeps-its-startup-culture/#commentsFri, 07 Feb 2014 17:40:00 +0000http://blogs.forbes.com/women2/?p=2301The Women 2.0 conference speaker talks about growing SpaceX from a startup with a handful of employees to a company with out-of-this-world ambitions.

By Jessica Stillman (Editor, Women 2.0)

What does it take to go from tiny to huge? And how can a company that make that journey retain the best aspects of startup culture? If anyone should have insight into these questions it’s Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX (as well as a keynote speaker at our upcoming conference), who joined Elon Musk’s aerospace startup as employee number seven and now helps to manage a team of around 3,000.

We asked Shotwell about the company’s journey from wild idea to real-life rocket maker, as well as her personal journey from technologist to manager (and even got a bold prediction about the future of human space exploration thrown in!)

You’ve seen SpaceX go from tiny to quite big. What challenges were you most concerned about as the company grew and how did you tackle them?

Maintaining the culture of efficiency and immediacy, as well as ensuring a connection to the goals was a concern. Internal communication becomes key to alleviating this. I meet with groups of SpaceXers in very informal settings (fireside chats) to make sure the team knows what we need to do and understands the issues we face. I always encourage employees to feel free to raise any issues that prevent them from getting good work done. I also have an anonymous suggestion box that goes directly to my email—it helps me stay on top of issues, and also discover areas of opportunity throughout the company.

How about your own role — you came from a technical background, so what new skills have you needed to learn to lead SpaceX well as it grew?

An important skill for all SpaceXers is the ability to accept critical feedback. This is key to anyone’s growth and becoming better at what they do. Feedback is a gem that should be accepted gladly, but unless you are used to it or have a culture of feedback, it can be quite difficult to accept.

Thanks to the scale of what it’s building, SpaceX is different from your typical startup, but what are the ways your company is still similar?

SpaceX is a flat organization. Anyone gets to talk to anyone and the best idea wins–even if it comes from an intern. And like many startups, we favor results over process and do our best to minimize or eliminate any red tape.

What would you say to a young person interested in getting involved in the aerospace industry — is this a good field to join and any tips on breaking in or preparing yourself to succeed?

The key is to join an industry that you have a passion for. If you love cars, then automotive is where you should end up. If you like rockets (who doesn’t like rockets?) then aerospace is great. My advice is always to be the most knowledgeable person in the room, but don’t act like it… You can’t always be the smartest person in the room, but if you know your stuff you can always be a strong contributor.

My parents had the moon landing. What similarly impressive space accomplishment will my generation probably get to witness?

I have always known that the startup world was full of young entrepreneurs, but it wasn’t until I attended my first startup event and found myself surrounded by college students and 20-somethings that it really hit me. My company is one of the few that is actually targeting…me. Though there are plenty of women in business, not many are creating startups for middle-aged women, designed by middle-aged women. I realized I was in for a long journey, without much support or best practices to help me along the way.

But the fact is, this is a demographic currently left largely underserved. There is a real lack of startups, and technology, that address the unique challenges that women are facing in the middle of our lives. Understanding what these challenges are is the first step. Our generation of women is experiencing an entirely new set of obstacles than those before us. We’re working full time on our careers, while balancing raising our children, working on a happy marriage, caring for elder parents, and more – not to mention trying to take care of ourselves in the process. Having a first-hand grasp of some of the specific issues that arise from these circumstances allows us to better find ways to solve them.

Balancing Full-time Work and Family

It’s no secret that the working women of the world are still trying to perfect the balancing act of raising a family while still maintaining a successful career. We’re making progress on this constant juggling, and there is more to do before we find a better way to manage all the aspects that come with a career and family.

The Digital World and Our Children

I may be tech-savvy but the digital world that my child is exposed to is down-right scary. I knew I was in trouble when my daughter knew how to break into my blackberry when she was 3 ½. Now that she’s ten years old, I feel like I spend as much time, or more, monitoring what she is doing than her actually doing it. And I know even if I protect her at home there are so many other places she could access information that I may not feel is appropriate for her.

One example, YouTube. Will someone please come up with a way to block inappropriate content? Our kids are spending more time online watching videos – yet there is no basic content filtering that you get on TV. And that is just one example. This world didn’t exist when we were children. Now, we’re simultaneously learning about our new digital world, while also trying to supervise our children’s interaction with it.

Divorce and Life After

Having a happy marriage alongside the myriad of other issues that middle-aged women are dealing with is definitely important; but it’s also a harsh reality that 50% of marriages in the United States today end in divorce. Many women of my generation are facing this issue, and there’s surprisingly little in the way of technology to help them. I remember watching my own parents go through a difficult divorce, and knew I wanted things to be different when I went through my own.

Getting the divorce is only the first step; if you have children, there are more rough roads ahead, particularly when it comes to child support. I had no idea how hard it would be to manage child support and the many other expenses involved with raising a child. When I tried to find a solution, I was shocked that something didn’t already exist to solve this problem. This problem is what led me to create my current business, SupportPay. [SupportPay is a finalist for the Women 2.0 PITCH Competition being held at our upcoming conference. Tickets are still available!]

Caring for Aging Parents

More now than in the past, women are choosing to have children later in life. For many, that means that caring for young children also coincides with caring for their own parents as they start to age. There’s a reason they call us the “Sandwich Generation;” we’re smack in the middle of attending to the needs of our parents and our kids at the same time. We’ve learned to ask for help and accept it when offered, but how else can we manage these needs alongside all the rest?

As I’ve started my own business, I looked for other startups by women my age and could only find a handful. How can we have more middle-aged women leave corporate America to take the risk of starting the company of their dreams and building solutions to fill those problems we face? We also need more investors who are willing to support these startups to help break the mold. We need to invest in these new areas that haven’t seen innovation in the past. We need a movement to support these new ideas. I sure do hope it starts soon, because I have plenty of other problems that need solving!

What other needs of middle-aged women would you like to see startups address?